Only The Pigmentation of Fact
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: An extended take of Illyana's return - what it means and what it doesn't.


**A/N:** Title from a quote from Djuna Barnes. This is Quest For Magik. Slanted and squinted at.

~||x||~

In the beginning there was darkness.

Ripped apart from the ways—

Ripping apart the final rest forced will of destruction and creation.

Ripping apart the stillness exploded a sense of urgency and importance.

Ripping apart the silence roared a cacophony of demands and commands.

(_Come unto me child. A grand and glorious destiny awaits you._

_Tell no one. Just follow my voice to paradise.)_

—and thrust into the light.

~||x||~

Exhausting, excruciating labor gave birth to a blurry landscape of angry yellow eyes and turgid reddened skin. Potent words causing lattice lines of pain and blood to arc in a full grown new born.

Screams of recrimination leading only to expatriation.

_(I showed you mercy. I let you live.)_

Forced into a new world; a chaotic, primordial, ever-changing world, reeking of foulness.

Alone and stumbling, confused about sound and sight and feeling, but none of it moved the demonchilde. The cold, or the heat, glanced upon her pale skin touching but unchanging. The ground shifted only to be met with lithe nimbleness, which limbs betrayed knowledge unknown to a mind.

Pitted against creatures of scales and sharp teeth and tales and tentacles and feverish appetites. The first found with anxiety, defended magically to quick death with surprise, and then the next ones after it stalked down with a relish only increasing upon each demise.

It happened when no was watching; because there was no one to watch.

Ichor sliding off the back of a hand, where fingers had just been sucked clean, dripped down her dress to land on her feet. Angry outburst and fastidious impulse silenced in the shock of ten pink toes with ten little toe nails, which wiggled under her discerning gaze.

Discordance between two smaller goblins, across the dale between the rimrook trees, gathering her attention as prey only could a predator. She moved to go to them, red eyes glowing and smile splitting, but stopped, looking back at her hoofed feet.

They would pay for distracting her.

From whatever it was that had distracted her.

In the evening she rested in the cracks of mountainous caves newly formed.

The fields were fallowed of all that afternoon. The hills by the evening. Those who did not fall; left at the call of her Father. The building of his grand army. He was going to seek the she that was not her.

The stories he had told, had screamed, she knew. Recollected as the only words of import in her existence. She could repeat them as they'd been said. Note for note and word for word and scene for scene. A child's story book of repetition. No merit for the meat of things unimportant to a life.

Unrepentant rest claimed her turbid mind.

It was in this moratorium of movement, heart beat slowing, power congealing around her shield, they came. Flickering in and out of distorted vision.

A metal man with blue eyes and a girl with long brown hair. The chromium shine of a rolling chair. The fall of snow on a once rugged summer field. A group of children, loud with exuberance, complaints, pride and dreams. The fist of the large purple demon midwife.

A wolf with scared brown eyes and short red hair. A tall white haired man who whimpered soothingly only to bite her suddenly. The flare of light circles. The sound of laughter. The taste of bubble gum.

Waking she found herself aware of something she knew and had never known, but that did not stop its course in her veins—fear.

_(I've been torn into so many pieces, I don't know for_

_certain which is the real me. I doubt I ever will.)_

She vanished in a disc, without breaking down her shields, and ravaged what was left in the mountains. Ruthlessness like a new skin, smeared in colored gore across her shorter skirt and top, yet still her questions were written in their entrails and their unfounded answers in their blank eyes.

Demons don't dream.

The mountains were clear by morning.

Then leveled by noon's tempered rage at discordant dissolved senses as she claimed denials bid.

The voice came now. First they had been quiet, ignorable, and simple. Now they clamored for all attention and devotion. They whispered. They joked. They laughed. They jeered. They insulted. They insinuated. They spoke. They simpered. They pleaded.

And then silenced; upon midday, as her Father, half their world away, rallied at his monstrous troops about the children that would come soon.

Tomorrow.

Not even an Earth day away.

Sometime. Somewhere. Somewhen.

She reached out through the mirror for them and found them, too, speaking of the girl. The not herself, herself. Of Illyana Rasputin, her glorious heights and fearsome depths of life before she faded behind the curtain. She had not meant to stay, not meant to listen, but she could not break apart the mirror.

The blind spoke to the blindest.

~||x||~

It was to be a game.

Between herself and her father.

There was little other reason than the fact he had exiled her, had longed to go after this other version of herself, that she callously stole his plans from the world which formed her forth, and which helped her steal half the treasure he'd sought.

Children, not even fresh from their first sins.

As incapable of defeating a minor demon…

…as knowing what to make of the one who saved them.

Having only pointed to the one with wings, who would work so well as her next pawn after N'astirh, they had turned on her. Anger became easily just a demonstration of her powers, while threats were kept subtle and only tertiary in means of describing what was either going on or what she was doing.

Play toys did not need explanations.

They would not understand.

They did not need to.

_(Innocence is power. _

_And power is the Soulsword)_

She just needed the small girl, with the fragile gossamer wings she so longed to shred, to give over her soul. If that meant she had to defeat all the others and twist the knife in deeper about those who were not here with them, who were truly dying at her fathers hand, she had no qualms against that either.

All that mattered was the soul.

The storytelling as she rent the soul was for her own amusement. Pixie's screaming as she extracted the bloodstone was simply a perk.

Their continued rebellion was irritating.

Their winning against her spells was far more.

This was a possibility, though it had not been a likely one.

The world spun black then white, awash with pain and sense of weightlessness.

When her eyes opened again she was surrounded by strange people. A creature of lava, a werewolf, a fairy, a goblin, and a girl with no eyes. Why were they looking at her so?

(_Who...who are you? Where's Kitty? Where are Dani and Sam? _

_Please...where is my brother?)_

And then it made sense.

Or, as much sense as Limbo and Belasco and Illyana might ever make together.

She began speaking to them, in the words others had given her—in the story she had only learned at her birth two days ago, in the story she had only heard the night before from them, in the dreams that had come to plague her two nights—and in the truth, as much as a demon could tell, of her being alive this two days.

A great—terrifying and confusing and wonderful—thing happened as she spoke.

Something without time or texture or color or shape began to take presence at the edge of her awareness, as did the dangerousness of its existence, and the absolute knowledge that she had to protect it

At any cost.

**Her soul. **

~||x||~

Nothing could hold off war in Limbo. Not clarity, or caution, or confused truth.

All that had been changed, all that had been learned, would be put off until later.

The children would go to save their friends, and she would go to slay her father (again).

If she had any moment of doubt it has vanished with the admonition of her appearance. The rejection only rankling her confusion into a clear form of angry vengeance. The world fell away and all that was left were yellow eyes which needed plucking and red skin that needed shredding.

The demons set free, mayhem of battle began.

Try as she might, there was only so much she could do. The land surged up to greet her, to fill her, and was stopped by Belasco's shields around the castle. The wards which worked against her magiks and herself.

Demonchilde cried out for Pixie, but she lost the girl amid waves of acidic pain which delved deep into her being.

The power, dark and deep, which sought with each wave to eradicate her.

On the brink of blackness the attack abated. Spots before her eyes and limbs trembling—though the fear and rebellion coursing through her was now Belasco's—she crawled toward her gloriously forged weapon. Forcing her legs to hold her weight, she stood and walked up behind the little fey.

Her pleading was echoed by the voice of a young girl in her mind and the sound of crying, which caused her responses to be slower. More honest, about her purity and about her friends. Almost regretful of the deed she had forced. Almost.

Only almost.

Because it did not make her love any less the scream that shuddered through Limbo when Belasco was stabbed. Because it did not make her feel any worse when he begged, holding to the edge of this world, she stepped on his fingers, pointing out that she was his issue.

When Belasco threatened to find her one last time, she pushed him over, banishing him from her realm. The land washed into her senses, each mountain and tree and river and being as easy to move or change as her thoughts. The children's voices tried to invade the wash of claim but they were drowned out by Limbo.

By the cheer, the endless power, it gave its new (and returned) ruler.

Taken by the flood, she turned on her precious innocent child, speaking words which echoed around her mind in another voice. She could be better than this fragile, almost human, form. Better than any demon in Limbo or its connected realms.

She. Could. Be. A. God.

She rebuked the moment someone called her that pitiful humans' name.

_(Snowflake? _

_Snowflake, can that be you?)_

As fast as the world had formed it all was gone. She was grasping to keep her thoughts in the sweeping flux. That voice, she knew that voice,—and that word—shattering every semblance of foundation that had righted itself.

Time washed in on itself, pictures and feelings and words exploding across her mind, shoving out her ability to maintain balance. It felt as though the ground cracked around her, but it was only inside. His name, which was safety and love and home and forgiveness and acceptance and always_always_**always**, slipping from her lips.

Then her chin was being lifted, by a hand she knew was nearly the size of her face, yet soft as the wind through wheat, and she was looking at blue eyes. His words were lost, whispering only that name they'd called her and denied her. That name, that name, that name, tasting of deep drifts of snow and innocence and endless blue, like the eyes which bore into hers.

_Illyana. _

And suddenly she felt something she hadn't, again: shame. Shame that she ripped Pixie's soul. Shame that she'd manipulated children. Shame that she'd sent Belasco over. Shame that she was Mistress of Limbo. Shame that she had horns and hooves and a tail. Shame that she was a demon.

It was the last which caused the panic and anger that came out as jerking from Piotr and yelling. Throwing all her powers and want into surge she forced Limbo to send all the heroes, children and adults, home at that exact moment. Portals of blinding blue sucking their bodies away.

Still she couldn't move away from him, and, half gone, he still leaned toward her. Her mind tried to stop her, but she reached up to rest her hand across his cheek and chin, the way his hand had touched her so recently. His pleading barely reached her ears, but his eyes had seemed so desperate, so saddened, she felt her insides twist.

Then he was gone, as she whispered into the empty space.

Demons didn't feel regret; or shame.

Her red eyes studied the expanse laid wide before her, as the world rippled against gates slamming shut around all entrances to Limbo.

~||x||~

Much time was spent sitting in the (_her_) throne.

Back straight, arms rested across the sides, and hands curled over the ends.

Her eyes stayed open, focused forward, while she traveled ever and ever outward.

The faces and voices of the recent days mingled with faces and voices of days without time. Recounting her birth and her life to this point, complicated with the things she knew, but didn't know, yet that came to her awake and asleep now.

And always there was the one which worried at her most.

The word, the name—_'Illyana'—_repeated in her mind; an unending drum beat, a parasite taken host, a warrior at the door; woken and refusing, even for a moment, to cease.

_(Life was easier when I was innocent. _

_The more I learn, the more I discover how little I truly know_

_and how deadly dangerous the little knowledge can be.)_


End file.
